FAQ

General

Katerra is a technology company optimizing the way we develop, design, and construct buildings. We are ushering in an era of design and construction that moves beyond compromise: Better, faster, cheaper – we believe you can have it all.

Using the disciplines, processes, and hindsight of the extraordinary gains of the last several decades in electronics manufacturing, Katerra is putting modern technology to work at all levels of the construction industry, from supply sourcing to design to manufacturing and construction for a growing number of building markets – including residential, senior, essential housing, educational, industrial, and retail developments.

The $1.3 trillion US construction industry is ripe for disruption. As the last craft industry, construction has yet to enter the industrial or technology age. People are building homes today essentially the same way they did in the mid-1800s. Economies of scale just don’t exist: most sites/projects are designed, planned, quoted, bought out, and built as one off projects. Yet they all have many standardized materials, labor skills, design components, processes in common. We saw a grave need to modernize the entire process of construction, so we’re doing that from end to end.

Our chairman and co-founder Michael Marks is an experienced technology executive and founder of Riverwood Capital. He is perhaps best known for his 13-year role as the CEO of Flextronics, where he built the business into one of the biggest technology companies in the world.

A significant partner with Katerra, the Wolff Company (a real estate private equity firm) is committed as Katerra’s principal launch customer and the company’s executive chairman, Fritz Wolff, is a Katerra co-founder and board member.

With talent from Apple, Google, Motorola, HP, GoPro, Nokia, SanDisk and Schlumberger, among other leading companies, our team combines expertise in architecture, design, material sourcing, manufacturing, logistics, technology and construction to provide a single integrated offering.

One differentiator is our global supply chain expertise. Another is how we’re building: we are constructing building panels/components of the buildings inside the factory, but not entire rooms or modules. The cost savings in shipping the panels to the site are better than modules or units, which is what others have done. Finally, we are rethinking the entire process from end to end, using technology to modernize it wherever possible. The combination of those three assets set us apart and have driven our tremendous growth to date.